


The Garden of the Dead

by timehopper



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dead animals, F/M, Finger Sucking, Monster Motifs, Oral Sex, Scratching, Trans Female Character, Trans Marianne von Edmund, religious motifs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:20:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timehopper/pseuds/timehopper
Summary: Dimitri and Marianne, a king and his queen, two beasts seeking refuge in one another. Perhaps it is fitting that they may only find their solace in a wilted garden, infested with the dead.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Marianne von Edmund
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	The Garden of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for Fodlan Secrets, an NSFW FE3H zine. I wrote this fic to accompany Ally's gorgeous DimiMari art, which can be found [here](https://twitter.com/Fe3hSins/status/1300866423301042176). (NSFW warning!)
> 
> Please note that Marianne is trans in this fic, and the terms "cock" and "clit" are used interchangeably with her. If that makes you uncomfortable, then you may want to turn back.

The ruins are quiet, long-abandoned and overgrown. Marianne trails a hand along the soundless, broken harpstrings of dying branches to the crumbling stone edifice of what once may have been a beautiful fountain. She searches, eyes wandering over gnarled roots and dried leaves, for her king, her husband, taking refuge in this hollow space - the only place they feel that they belong.

She does not sing as she walks: her voice is too raspy to carry a tune, left to wither from disuse. But it is enough to hum, the sound scratching in her throat. The animals here will not answer her, regardless. They are not the creatures in fairy tales: they do not sing to her, would not aid her if she asked. They simply watch, and wait, and walk, going about their business as if she were a corpse, as if she were the same as them: withered bones brought to life.

She watches them, too. Skeletons in the grass, in the sky: a deer, laid down to die; a wolf, a fox, a wild boar, endlessly pacing about as a dove circles overhead, like a vulture searching for meat that no longer clings to bones. She sees a scared horse, willingly offering itself as prey. 

Better to be prey, Marianne thinks, than a beast. 

And yet the beast is her sole comfort. It is solace, comfort in what she is - what  _ he _ is, within and without. She finds herself calling to it, answering its call to her and sighing raggedly as she falls, falls, falls. 

Marianne finds him in their garden: the garden of the dead, a forest overgrown and withered all at once. A contradiction, like them: beauty and beast, rolled together. Exquisite and fearsome, terrifying and lovely.

He must hear her coming, and yet he stands still, eye fixed on the bones, watching them move about as if he were not there. As if he were one of them, too, perhaps. He does not flinch when she stands by his side, does not push her away when she reaches for him. He simply turns, his eye fixing to hers, his hand slowly finding her waist. 

"Marianne," he whispers, the rasp of his voice clinging to her senses as his hand to the fabric of her dress. 

"I'm here." She presses herself close to him, forehead tucked beneath his chin. He tilts his head down, kisses her crown, inhales her scent. She breathes deep of him as well, nose buried in his neck.  _ Comfort. Familiarity. _ Her chest swells with it, heat pooling in her stomach. 

A hand drags across her back. Presses between her shoulder blades. “Beautiful,” Dimitri breathes, and she isn’t sure if he means her or the garden or the bones and beasts within. Perhaps he means all of it. Perhaps none.

He sinks to his knees, pulling her down along with him. She holds fast, body trembling in his strong, strong arms. She used to hate falling. Fear it. But now, oh, how she loves to fall, how she loves being dragged down in his embrace. Two beasts, equal, on their knees for one another. Bowing, supplicant. Respect that would be shown to royalty, but is reserved for them. For husks. 

It’s sinful, this mockery they make of the goddess and her gift. But as he lays her back on the dying grass and as she reaches for him, pulling him down until their lips meet, Marianne sighs, happy at last to be where she belongs. 

And Dimitri - he moans with it, reverent and sacrilegious. His breath is hot on Marianne’s cheek as he pulls away to kiss down her neck, to hook his fingers in her neckline and drag it down, down, down, fabric tearing where the clasps will not give way. 

“Marianne, my Marianne.” His words tickle against her neck. She shivers in his hold, presses closer to him.

“Dimitri,” she whispers back, his name a broken prayer on her lips. Funny, she thinks, that she’s the one being worshipped here, in this place the goddess has not touched. 

More blasphemy for the beastly. 

He drags his lips up her neck. Marianne slips a hand into his hair. She pulls him to her, seals their lips together once again. Dimitri kisses her deep, a hand cupping her jaw. She feels the sharp edge of his nail against her skin - tantalizingly delicate, accidental. His hands tremble with restraint, and she pulls, dragging him down with her. On the dirty forest floor, where they belong. Where they want to be. 

He bites her lip; she pulls away with a gasp, a keening whine. Dimitri chases her lips, swallows her moan as his hand finds her breast. 

“My love,” he breathes against her, filling her mouth, her lungs, her heart and mind and soul with his voice. “Please, tell me what you would like.” 

He’s so gentle, so quiet. So unlike the beast she’d been warned of. The one she’s  _ seen _ , tearing men apart with spear, with sword, with hands, with teeth. But Marianne can hardly judge when she is so much the same. 

She gazes up at him, his hair falling about her face. There’s so much she wants. From him, from herself. From the world, from the goddess, from their garden, from the dead land that grants them refuge.

She doesn’t dare ask. “Make me forget,” she pleads instead, voice like smoke in the breeze.  _ Let us pretend, a little longer, that we’re human. _

Dimitri nods, his lips brushing hers with the motion. “As you wish,” he says, and he dips down again, traces the curve of her throat with his mouth - down, down, down some more, to her clavicle, and back up again to her shoulder, to her neck.

Teeth scrape against her skin. They’re blunt, dull - so unlike the monsters’ in the stories, sharp and bloody and wicked - but they sting all the same as they sink into her neck. Marianne gasps, back arching, her breasts pressing up against his clothed chest. No blood is drawn from her, but surely she will bruise - no matter, though. The bruises are simply proof of what he is, of what she is, of what they are to each other.

She grasps at him, nails scratching against his chest. They are not claws, not talons, but they tear at his clothes as though they were, leaving little limp scraps of fabric and loose, hanging threads behind.

He moans against her, voice more like a song than a beastly roar, and she leans up, up, head thrown back to capture his lips. She swallows the sound, sucks it down greedily, her own moan torn from her throat as his hand dips beneath her skirts. He caresses her thighs, slides his fingers between them. Dimitri sighs, shaking and reverent, when he realizes she’s wearing nothing beneath her dress but stockings and garters.

“Marianne...”

Her name again, quivering on his lips. She opens her eyes - when had they shut? - and watches his face. His eye flits from lips to eyes to hair and back, and as she smiles, he leans forward to devour her.

He draws her to him, and she presses into his hold, inching ever closer as his hand finds her cock. He strokes it, two fingers to the underside; she twitches against the touch, gasps into his mouth.

"Please," Marianne begs, lashes fluttering against his cheek. Dimitri pulls back, lays her gently down upon the ground. The dried grass itches against her exposed skin: a fitting bed for their lovemaking.

Fingers wrap around and stroke her. Marianne bites her lip; Dimitri leans in, kisses away the tears in the corners of her closed eyes. 

"Hush, my queen." A growl, tone and words at odds. "We are safe."

"Safe," she breathes back. Together, yes, they are safe, hidden away in their garden of the dead. Safe, surrounded by each other and those who understand them best: the spirits of the dead and the bones they've left behind. Those who came before, and those they will someday join. Those they have already joined, in so many ways.

She is safe in his arms, and he in hers. The arms of beasts.

She turns in his hold, reaches for his belt. Marianne tugs it open, slides leather through loops, tosses it aside irreverently. She grasps at Dimitri again, tugs his trousers down, exposes him as he's exposed her, and lowers her lips to his cock. She kisses him, slides her tongue across the tip; she laps at the wetness there, looks up into Dimitri's eye and sucks the head of his cock between her lips as if she would die without it.

" _ Goddess. _ " His voice trembles as he throws his head back, mouth open and eye shut against the heavens. Marianne wonders if he's truly praying, or if he is committing yet another act of blasphemy in calling  _ her _ his goddess.

The latter, perhaps: Dimitri worships her as though she were divine, threading hands through her hair and undoing her meticulously-woven braids. He whispers to her, little nonsensical praises: he calls her beautiful, tells her he loves her, confesses he wishes they could stay here, like this, forever. Just the two of them, alone in their kingdom of the dead.

With every word, Marianne falls further. She wishes alongside him, proving her devotion with mouth and throat and hands. She traces deep red lines across his back, where no one can see but her. Blemishes upon his beauty, things he wishes he could hide except when they're alone.

But he cannot hide from her. They are too alike.

His grip tightens in her hair. Marianne watches him, listens as his words turn to shallow breaths sucked in through his teeth. His voice becomes mere noise - low grunts in his throat, and ah, she thinks, there he is. Her beast.

And she, in turn, is his.

She presses forward, swallows him down to his base: hungry, desperate, devouring. Dimitri howls above her; his nails scrape her scalp; Marianne reaches for him, digs her talons into his skin, pulls him close and urges him to fill her. He spends down her throat, and she pulls away, gaze turned toward his face as he gazes back down at her, eyes alight with hunger.

Dimitri lays her back down, hand firm on her shoulder. She can feel him tremble with restraint, can feel him holding back the power that threatens to overwhelm them both. Marianne thinks to tell him not to bother, that she wants to see him, wants to  _ feel  _ him as he is, but seals her lips against the idea. He's trying so, so hard. Even here, where they need not uphold their human façades, he tries; the least she can do is try, too.

He ducks his head, skims the curve of her neck with his lips, his teeth. She slides her hand up his hip, around his back, to the tips of his hair. Tugs a strand between her fingers, curls it around one. She watches the motion, the way the golden strands catch the light and glimmer, ethereal, in what little sun filters through the dark, hanging canopy. Such a colour should not exist in their garden.

And yet she's enamoured by it. Marianne sits up in Dimitri's arms to press a kiss to his hair. He tilts his head to allow her access - anything for his queen - and she buries her nose in it, inhales his scent. And Marianne's thoughts do not turn, this time, to what the action may mean: how animal it is, how it is a comfort sought out of instinct rather than rational thought. Instead, she sighs, gravelly, at how wonderful he feels against her, how nice he smells despite what they have surrounded themselves with. He does not reek of the dead, but of life: of flowers, lilies woven into a crown atop his head, later torn asunder and stomped on as he fled. As he ran away from the expectations of the living and into the arms of ghosts.

They whisper to him even now, Marianne knows. She can see it in his eye as she pulls back, as she moves to kiss him. His gaze is trained far from her, far from anything. Hollow, vacant, searching for an apparition she will never see.

She understands. Marianne has ghosts, too.

But her ghosts are quiet, wordless. They circle her, the wolf in the forest and the vultures in the sky. Their bones click and clack together, the only reminder of their presence. Marianne refuses to look; instead she cups Dimitri's face in her palm, pulls his gaze toward her. "Kiss me," she rasps, and at last Dimitri is torn from his repose.

Their lips meet. He crawls over her, a leg on either side of her hips. His hand dips between them, a finger tracing the curve of her pelvis. Marianne shivers, whines into his mouth; emboldened, Dimitri continues. He rubs her there, back and forth, until the tip of his finger reaches her entrance. 

He pulls back, watches her face; there is little kindness in his gaze, and what Marianne sees is masked by hunger, by want. He smiles, wrong and predatory and beautiful, his sharp teeth cutting into her vision like the sun through storm clouds, and Marianne is certain she must look much the same.

She laughs.

She laughs, and Dimitri joins her, foreheads pressed together. "Beautiful," he says again, deep and dark and promising. "Exquisite." He kisses her, hard enough that Marainne wonders whether she will bruise, light enough to hope she does. "And all mine."

He presses his finger into her entrance. She gasps, presses up against him, clutches the material at his back. Dimitri soothes her with whispered promises, gentle commands for her to relax. 

He lifts his hand away, presses the tip of his finger to her mouth. She sucks it between her lips, wets it with her tongue, and he pulls back to press it into her again. A broken sob tears itself from Marianne's throat, and she watches Dimitri gaze down at her with grateful, loving tears prickling in the corners of her eyes.

"Thank you, my love," she breathes. And then she falls back, allows herself to enjoy the pleasure that rolls through her with each of Dimitri’s motions inside her.

He presses in deeper, deeper, and moves away to kneel between her legs, instead. "I would do anything for you, my queen." 

The hand not inside her traces down her chest, brushes over her breasts. She moans as his fingers slide over a nipple, whimpers when he pinches it and squeezes the underside of her breast in just the way she likes. "Please," Marianne gasps. "More--"

"Shh." Dimitri kisses the shell of her ear, breathes gently into it. "I will give you all that you desire and more."

She nods, helpless against his words, his hands, their combined promise. Marianne bites her lip - the sharp point of a canine enough to ground her, to remind her of who she is, what they are, what they're doing. It is a sin, she is sure, to enjoy his touch so much when she is so undeserving of it.

But he quiets the thought with nails scraping past her stomach, light but stinging just the same. Marianne closes her eyes as Dimitri takes her in hand and swipes a thumb over her tip. She drips with need for him, and he smiles, watching as another bead of precum forms beneath his touch.

"How the goddess saw fit to bless me with you, I'll never know." He shifts between her legs, presses himself to her, cock to clit, and wraps his fingers around them both. "Monsters do not deserve such gifts."

Her agreement remains unspoken, sung only in the broken tones of her pleasure. If he does not deserve her, then she deserves him far less than even that; but here, in the garden, they can pretend that it is not so. Here, where they can hide from Her gracious gaze, they can pretend this truly is a gift, and not the punishment they have been told their love must be.

She drags him down into a kiss, more teeth than tongue, and he responds in kind: a moan into her mouth, a firmer grasp on her clit, a sudden curl of his finger inside her. Marianne hisses, the sound coloured by joy, by want, by pleasure.

"There." The voice she speaks with hardly sounds like her. It pulls a growl from Dimitri's throat, and he presses harder against her lips, slides his finger out and thrusts it back in, strikes her in the spot that makes her vision swim. She begs for him, begs for release, not with words but with motion, rocking against him and thrusting into his hand. Instinct, not thought; animal, not human.

She clenches around his finger and releases into his hand. Dimitri follows not a moment later, announced by the deep, guttural growl that rumbles through his chest and against Marianne's. They fall together, a tangle of sticky limbs wrapped around bodies, noses buried in necks and in hair, breathing one another in, a quiet acknowledgement that all they have been granted in this world is one another.

Perhaps that is all they need, after all.

When they come apart at last, two beasts becoming human again, Dimitri combs his fingers through Marianne's hair. He moves to help her dress, to rearrange her skirts, and she holds a hand to his chest to stay his good intentions.

"Not yet," she says. She wishes to remain in their shared purgatory just a moment longer.

And so Dimitri nods, understanding of her wish in a way that only he can be. He lifts her hand from his chest, pulls it to his lips, kisses her knuckles and parts his lips to press one between his teeth. When he pulls away, Marianne smiles at him, sadness tinging the expression; he returns it, and together, they look out on their garden. At the dying plants, the dried, brown grass, the animal bones retreating to their dens now that their king and queen intend to leave them for the living once again.

She takes Dimitri's hand, and stands with him, side-by-side: she, the Queen of Beasts; and he, the King of Ghosts, together in their kingdom of ruin.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, the illustration this fic was written for can be found [here](https://twitter.com/Fe3hSins/status/1300866423301042176)!
> 
> If you enjoyed this and think you might like to see more, have a chat, or would like to get to know me, please check out my twitter [@tim3hopp3r](https://twitter.com/tim3hopp3r).
> 
> And if you would like to find out how to support me, I have a handy list of links right [here](https://twitter.com/tim3hopp3r/status/1355219789560471554). Please check it out! I wouldn't be able to do this without people like you supporting me. ♥
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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